"I have been known to cheat," he said, "but my dad had quintuple bypass
surgery two years ago, and my grandfather had quadruple, so I'm in line. I
have the genetics."

Whatever your reason, a vegetarian lifestyle is still unusual: A 2006
Harris poll found fewer than 3 percent of Americans considered themselves
vegetarian, but the number is growing.

"I think the image of vegetarians in the 19th and 20th centuries was
'fringe kooks,'" said food historian Andrew F. Smith. "Americans ate meat.
We were of English derivation and by gosh, we ate beef and we ate pork and
we ate lamb and we ate everything else we could get our hands on.

"I think throughout much of American history this was the case," he said.
"It's only in the last 30 years that vegetarianism has come into the
mainstream."

Rip Esselstyn himself is a former meat eater and a champion triathlete
who says he feels better competing as a vegetarian.

"Every once in a while, I'll get a whiff of barbeque, you know, of a
cheeseburger, something like that, and it takes me back. And I'm like, 'Ooh,
yeah, that smells good!' But I can leave it at that. I have no problems
leaving it right there."

That may have been a very wise move: According to a 2007 study in the New
England Journal of Medicine, heart disease actually kills more firefighters
than fire itself.

Esselstyn put the station's diet and exercise regimen into a book,
appropriately titled "The Engine 2 Diet" (Grand Central Publishing). Besides
no meat, it also means little or no dairy, no fats and no oils … no kidding.

"Do you honestly think that every American could eat this way?" Smith.

"I don't think, I know every American could," Esselstyn said. "Now, it's
a matter of how do we get them to do that. I think in less than five years,
there will be such a stigma attached to eating meat and dairy, that it will
be similar to smoking cigarettes today."

"In less than five years? If you want to eat your cheeseburger, go
outside?" Smith said.

"You want to go eat a cheeseburger, then you need to go to a special
room, where people are eating cheeseburgers," he said. "Wouldn't that be
great?"

As a meat eater, I think not so great," said Nancy Rodriquez a
Connecticut nutritionist whose research has been funded by the beef
industry.

"I think that if you made a conscious decision to cut out meat, that you
run the risk of having a diet that isn't going to be adequate in a number of
nutrients," she told Smith. "One of the most important ones is iron, for
example, and the fact that the form of iron that you find in eggs or meat or
chicken, for example, is more readily absorbed and thought to be a better
type of iron that you'll find in vegetables."

Still, Rip Esselstyn is convinced meat does more harm than good, and
frequently cites research done by his father, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn.

"The food triangle is laden with foods that are going to guarantee that
millions of Americans are going to perish," said Dr. Esselstyn, who's
affiliated with the Cleveland Clinic. He says heart disease is practically a
given for everyone who eats what Americans like to eat.

"If you were to suddenly die and you were autopsied, yes, you'd find the
disease."

"All of us have it?"

"All of us who are eating the typical Western diet, and that's been
proved by study after study," Dr. Esselstyn said, "but you were startled by
it, because no one's ever shared that with you. That's not information that
we get to the general public."

Dr. Esselstyn's 12-year study found that a low-fat vegetarian diet,
combined with medication, gave heart patients lower cholesterol and clearer
arteries. Take a look at these angiograms: on the left, a withered, dying
artery of someone on a high fat diet; on the right, the same artery -
looking good as new - after 32 months on Esselstyn's all-vegetarian program.

But nutritionist Nancy Rodriguez says moderation and weight loss can
achieve the very same results.

"Simply losing weight for the majority of individuals is associated with
a reduction in cholesterol," she said.

"That's all it takes, is losing weight, not giving up [meat]?" Smith
asked.

"For many individuals, but it's not taking out all fat, and it's not
taking out all cholesterol. It's actually being very sensible in your
approach to how much of those type of food components you include in your
diet on a daily basis."

Still, Dr. Esselstyn's research was enough to convince the whole
Esselstyn clan to give up meat ... even Ann Crile Esselstyn, Rip's mom.

The family eats kale … a lot of kale. She called it "spinach with heft."

Dr. Esselstyn said, "the answer to disease is not more health care. The
answer to disease that we can control is to eliminate it. Show the people
how to eliminate it, and the giant step toward eliminating disease is
lifestyle change. And the giant factor in there is nutrition. Food.
Plant-based.

"Not sure if it makes me salivate, but it has a ring to it," Smith said.

But why prolong your life if you can't enjoy it?

"Those other types of pleasure that come from enjoying good quality
proteins, whether you're roasting a turkey or a piece of beef, I think it
would be sad to deprive ourselves of some of those things," said
nutritionist Rodriguez.

Firefighter Rip Esselstyn said he hopes people will at least try eating
less meat ... even if they can't go cold-turkey.

"I know that's not a reality for a lot of people," he said, "so you
really need to minimize it."

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